SEATTLE (AP) - The King County, Wash., sheriff has fired a deputy accused of threatening to arrest an editor for a Seattle weekly newspaper during a sidewalk confrontation last summer.
The Seattle Times reports (https://is.gd/EjOGHr ) that Sheriff John Urquhart (URK-hart) terminated 27-year department veteran Deputy Patrick Saulet on Monday.
The sheriff found that Saulet abused his authority in his dealings with Dominic Holden, news editor of The Stranger.
In a letter, Urquhart said that contrary to the deputy’s assertion that he engaged in a “social contact” in which he told Holden he couldn’t ride his bike on King County Metro property, Saulet expressly or implicitly threatened to arrest Holden while incorrectly identifying public property as private property.
Holden wrote that he was riding his bike last July 30 when he saw six law-enforcement officers surrounding a man seated on a planter box at a transit station. He said he took a photograph from a public sidewalk of Saulet, who told him to leave or risk arrest.
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Information from: The Seattle Times, https://www.seattletimes.com
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